Maybe It's the Weather
by Luciddreamer326
Summary: Based on moments of time for Mulder and Scully, this is a journey through their relationship pertaining to weather related events. Really, you’ll see.
1. Chapter 1

**Title**: It's the Weather

**Plot:** Based on moments of time for Mulder and Scully, this is a journey through their relationship pertaining to weather related events. Really, you'll see.

**Rating:** T (for totally awesome p ) Some language and sensitive situations will be a part of this story I imagine.

**Disclaimer**: Why does anyone ever put these? Anyway, not mine yadda yadda. I am still all for the Mulder and Scully Happy Meal though. Who should we write to? Imagine pulling out the Flukeman from your box of happiness. snickers

**Spoilers**: Seriesover. Watch it, k?

**Notes**: I haven't written any fan-fic in ages. I love feedback, so let me know how I am faring. ()

Target: **Pilot **(Rain)

Three days, two hours, twenty-six minutes. That is precisely how long he had known Dana Scully and she was already getting under his skin.

Working on the X-files with Diana had been different-much different. Of course, he had also developed a personal interest with her so that was partly to attribute to his cautiousness with the child following behind him.

Einstein's Twin Paradox? Who rewrites Einstein? Einstein wouldn't even rewrite himself, he thought as he walked along. Granted, the feat was amusing but she was not an enigma. Dana Scully, the trim 5'3 frame, long auburn hair, and baby face was an agenda and someone who wanted to bring him down.

I wish Diana were here, he said to himself. She had transferred out of the X-files to take an assignment on counter terrorism in Tunisia or Russia or…somewhere. His foot sank into the saturated earth and finished soaking his socks. He let out a loud curse, not even bothering to gauge Scully's reaction.

Diana's probably sipping fine Russian vodka while I trek through graveyards in 'plausible Oregon with Marie Curie, he scoffed inward.

He drug her to a dark corner of the cemetery in the pouring rain, hoping to find some clue to the case they were working on. All he found was an overturned grave and more banter from Ms. Nobel Prize.

Yes, he knew it must sound crazy as he sputtered through his speech. She met him through every theory, a verbal head butt if he ever experienced one. Finally, he gave up after she burst into a fit of laughter when he suggested Billy Miles had taken the young women to the forest, summoned by unseen forces.

"Let's go and get dry," he finally told her.

In the car, water dripped from the strands of her hair and his fingers shook from the cold as he cranked up the heater.

"I'm beginning to think you have a thing for the rain," she said with amusement.

"It never stops here," he smiled, tapping the window to his left. The drops pattered on the glass sending moisture smears across the shield.

"I can't wait to get into dry clothes and curl up under the covers," she shivered.

He sat feeling the hot air blow onto his fingers, lost somewhere in thought. It had been so long since he had a woman to lie beside him. With mock amusement, he glanced sideways to Scully. She was cute enough, seemingly small and delicate. Behind it all, he would almost bet she was a strong pillar of a woman. She sure hadn't let _him_ make anything off of her.

He threw the car into drive and pulled away from the dead. Who was he kidding? While Scully was attractive, he surmised he would never know the other side of her.

"So, how are you liking it so far?" he asked.

"It?" She frowned.

"The job. This," he motioned between them. "Twelve a.m., pouring rain, dead bodies, potential alien abductions."

"While amusing in radical probability, I look forward to finding some scientific, rationale explanation to all of this. Life is a complex puzzle. Flights of reality hardly help," she explained.

Like a dagger to his heart. And spoken like a true conspirator, he laughed without amusement. Diana had been an ally. Dana would be a foe. The thought of being shut down, the dismissal, and ridiculous reports angered him.

"It may sound like science fiction, but it's true. I'm not the one who made this stuff up. It's fact," he glowered.

"Fact? Based on what?"

"There is evidence. Everywhere."

"Grainy pictures of UFOs, rednecks from Podunkville claiming they saw the chupacabra , Big Foot, ghosts, demons, or any other myriad of holiday spectacle. It's unsubstantiated."

"I wasn't aware that the chupacabra had a holiday and you can't tell me you've never seen a man who bore a slight resemblance to a seven foot ape."

"The general public is full of men who scratch themselves and lack proper grooming habits," she shot to him with a layer of sarcasm.

"Just for a moment, let go of your convictions."

"If I did, then I wouldn't be true to me or to my work on the X-files," she answered.

For a moment, she sat silent and stared somewhere out into space. His knuckles turned white on the steering wheel.

"Where did all of this come from?"

It was only a whisper, a barely audible one at that. He sighed loudly and ran a hand through his damp hair. Once he gained his composure, he glanced her way again. She looked stung, afraid, unwanted.

"There's so much more to this life, Scully. So much more than what we see. I'm just trying to lift the veil and see what's behind the curtain."

He dodged the question with mild regret. Not that he minded telling her everything, but it was too soon for that. If she noticed his indirectness, she didn't let on. Instead, she just looked out the window.

"Maybe you are right," she admitted. She turned to look at him, blue eyes freezing him like ice. "But what if you're wrong?"


	2. Ice

Target: **Ice** (Snow)

How does one pack for trips like this? Her fingers felt numb just thinking about it. Layers, she said to herself. Throw on so many layers that you look like the Michelin tire man.

Layers did not stop the worms. The cold did not stop the worms. It only hid them, let them lie dormant until body-heated footsteps pushed into the packed snow, melting it for mere milliseconds then freezing it over again.

"Someone made a mistake. I asked for a cab to the Hilton," he quipped as he threw his pack into the floor and shook flurries from his hair. For a moment, she let herself imagine they were in some place lovely, like Aspen. Quickly, she shoved it aside. The forest probably held something even more menacing than the organisms tucked in the ice sheets.

They each had a room where dead men's shadows crawled along the walls. Behind her, a picture frame tipped over, as if by a ghostly hand and she cried out, hugging her knees tighter to her and burying her eyes from the world.

I wish he were here, she thought. How many rules would that break? He could just keep her company by telling her ridiculous stories about all the things she never believed in anyway and she would try not to find his awful jokes slightly charming.

Instead, he sat bolted behind a steel door because steel doors keep things from escaping. Yes, even ice worms.

For a terrible instant, she thought about running to him and throwing the deadbolt off. He doesn't go down without me, she told herself. But why? Why would she risk it all for him?

Because he would do the same.

And that was the only truth she knew. It's what you did for friends. You had their backs.

"Give him the specimen!", they yelled.

Creeeek! Slam!

There they were alone.

She felt jerky as his eyes burned into her from the slits. Her gun was outside with them. What if he attacked her?

"If you give me one, you'll infect me," he said in a low tone.

A few more hazy words were spoken and their hands were on one another, searching carefully, roaming one another's skin. Her heart stayed in her throat the entire time. Once it dissolved in her tubes, she vocalized her trust in him and only him.

They made it out alive and the worms stayed.

"I want a team out there. This is a great find," he said feverishly.

Torched, another voice said.

"Let them stay there. I never want to see snow again," she said, less than emphatic.

Two weeks later, she would think of warmer climates as she watched the tale-tale markers of winter fall like broken, fragmented stars from the sky.


	3. Dod Kalm

Target: **Dod Kalm** (Fog)

The life-force of all things, its deceptive trickling noise, betrayed their desperate senses. How does one die gracefully? Or where is the resolve found to do so? She wasn't ready to die, nor did she want to fade away with a whimper. If life were personified, she wanted to go kicking and screaming, gripping metaphorical testes until it was over.

I am not the only one fighting, she told herself as she stared out into nothingness. His weakened presence touched her but she did not turn to look at him. It wouldn't have done any good anyway. She wouldn't be able to see him.

"Ever have one of those days where you didn't want to even look at me? Well, now you can't," she heard him smile.

Her fingers curled around the rusting metal railing and she felt flakes stick to her skin.

"You should be conserving your energy."

"You know me, can't sit still."

Silence.

"What are you doing out here anyway? I know it isn't for the view."

"Thinking."

"About how this all ends?"

"No. About how it begins again."

More silence. It was all they needed. She felt his arm brush against hers in the foggy dark. Resolve fractured within her and she sought his shoulder with her aging cheek. He felt thin and bony against her but she said nothing.

Two days later, he fell asleep and did not wake up. He was her midnight vigil, her weathered fingers dropping from his own for tiny seconds as she checked his pulse, then lacing through again afterward.

She wasn't sure when she drifted away either but she woke to an itching sensation on the tops of her hands. Her mind moved her limbs even though her vision remained blurry and brilliant, white light flooded her senses.

"Agent Scully, calm down. You are in a hospital at Washington General. Stop trying to yank out your I.V.'s," a voice commanded.

Finally, her eyes focused on the bed beside her. His eyes remained closed and his heart monitor beeped in a steady cadence. Relief flooded into her. He was still alive.

"He lost a lot of fluids," the nurse explained, depositing her chart back at the end of her bed. "We are trying to get his levels back to normal." With that, she exited the room.

He looked small and fragile lying next to her, a deviation in the constant picture she had of his strong, powerful presence in her mind. With all the energy she could muster, she moved her body against the railing, not once thinking of the barrier giving way to oxidation, and reached her hand out for him. It was a struggle to touch him, but she managed to trace her hand along his arm.

"Hang in there," she whispered.

Settling back, she watched him sleep until she felt fatigue tugging on herself. She was afraid to take her eyes off him but eventually lost the battle. As her eyes fluttered close, she sent a small prayer heavenward, hoping to be tucked inside whatever vision he had playing on his eyes. They could chase monsters in their dreams.


	4. Quagmire

Target: **Quagmire** (Fog)

Her knock was weak as she gripped the snapped leather in her hand. It was chilly and dark and her tears littered the ground, coating the already saturated leaves. His footsteps grazed the edge of the door and he opened it to her, to her mourning face.

Extending a hand, she hid her face from the pale luminescence escaping his room. He took the object in his hand and examined it silently.

"_It_ fucking took Queequeg," she choked out. _It _being something she had no feasible grasp on.

"Think of the money you'll save on shots and food," he mused.

If looks could contain daggers, she hurled thousands at him, wishing he were strapped to a board in a circus sideshow and she were a mystic lady with fast hands and a good (or bad) aim. She knew he was trying to lighten the mood but it came across as insensitive.

He drug her out into the world again where _It_ sank their boat and they had to spend hours reminiscing and wondering what fictional characters they might be, were life something like a novel.

She became hungry during the regaling of stories and he offered her what little sustenance he had, orange tic-tacs he had picked up from the lake store. She had never understood the purpose of orange tic-tacs, for they were more closely related to candy than a breath mint. Silently though, she thanked him for the meager offering and the orange taste bled into her mouth and coated the back of her throat, removing the moldy, muddy taste of lake water.

"I always sort of likened myself to Odysseus, leaving the lovely wifey at home while I sailed around the sea, looking for monsters off the side of my boat," he admitted. "Let's be honest though. I don't think anyone else on Earth would follow me like you do."

"I might just stop one day, you know," she threatened. It was empty, unlike the dark night where monsters and countless other unseen things roamed.

He flipped over onto his side and rested on his elbow, looking quizzically at her. She questioned him with the raise of an eyebrow, a sort of habit that had tethered itself to his always seeking mind.

"If I am Odysseus, then that makes you…who?"

She had no idea. It had been years since she had read _The Iliad_ or _The Odyssey_ and she had no thoughts of what role she might take in this recreated epic.

"We could always tie ourselves to sheep and hope the ogre doesn't see us escape," she sighed, dodging the question. The rock that held their two bodies was becoming cramped and she closed her eyes tightly, thinking of a hot shower where the water didn't smell of rotting foliage.

"Unless we find sheep with flippers, or really big ducks, I think you and I are stuck," he smiled.

A whimper escaped her as she resigned to their situation, hoping someone came along sooner or later rather than some _thing_. Big Blue doesn't exist, she told herself. I don't believe in any of this.

"Maybe you are Calypso," he thought, "holding me here on this desolate rock, while subjecting me to torturous hours of being your love slave."

"Oh my God. In your dreams, Mulder," she huffed. Willing herself not to think about him in such a manner, she concentrated on the sounds of the night, the humming of the crickets or lack thereof.

They pulled a gun on the local scientist as he clomped by and heard their voices. Even worse than finding out they were mere feet from the shore, she hoped the man hadn't heard Mulder's bit about being her love slave. Fiction, she affirmed. That is as close to love as him and I will tread.

Odysseus the warrior slew the monster, a behemoth creature that took the form of an alligator. So much for redefining evolution.

As they were about to leave the land of lakes and prehistoric dinosaurs, he tossed a small envelope in the seat at her as he said goodbye to the local P.D.

Inside, a postcard boasting the famous "Big Blue" had been scribbled over with black sharpie, fangs protruding from the lips and sharp dorsal fins aligned perfectly on its back. Flipping it over, a box of orange tic-tacs sat taped on the back.

"For days that taste like muddy lake water. Sorry about the Queggers.-Mulder."

It was the perfect sympathy gift and she laughed as she clutched the card to her chest. He smiled to her as he entered the car and they pulled away. On the ride to the airport, they devoured the tic-tacs unexpectedly.

"Wow, those things are addicting," he said through a crunch. "I guess I owe you another box."

"Just take me to a place where 'thar be no monsters'," she said in a drawl.

Sadly, there was no place on Earth without darkness.


End file.
